


Three times Coulson absolutely didn’t have coffee with Daisy (and one where he truly didn’t)

by nausicaa_of_phaeacia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3+1, Daisy Is The Only Marvel Superhero, F/M, Phil Coulson: Human Desaster, Post-Season/Series 03, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6957388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/pseuds/nausicaa_of_phaeacia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does exactly what it says on the tin. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three times Coulson absolutely didn’t have coffee with Daisy (and one where he truly didn’t)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



> This is a (belated) birthday fic for the lovely Skyepilot, who prompted me "Them meeting in secret to have a coffee or something like that." Hope you like it! ♥
> 
> (Technically, all my fic except for The Shop Around the Corner qualifies as flashfic, I'm the most impatient person I know.) ;)

**one**

Until the very last moment, he’s afraid that she isn’t going to actually show up; not because he doesn’t trust her, but because he’s worried that something might happen: that she might have forgotten, that she might be urgently needed elsewhere, that he might have missed one of her encrypted messages saying that she won’t make it, that someone might have tailed him with the purpose of getting to Daisy.

He’d been looking for her for months already when she first messaged him, hacked his smartphone remotely to display a plain notification saying:  
_r o c k i n t h e s t u b b l e P h i l_ , and drove him to make desperate attempts at replying to his phone’s system notification, sending texts to himself at first, then getting the hang of it and renaming all the folders on his phone, so that the different file paths would make up something like  
_sdcard0/coulson/dear daisy/gotyourmessage/canwemeet/whereever.jpg._ He wasn’t sure if she’d even see it until the next notification:  
_m i s s u t o o . u n e e d t o e a t t h o_ which made him laugh and almost cry at the same time (he told Mack it was just the lack of sleep, his partner’s smile making it obvious he wasn’t buying that).

The next few weeks after that, he’d kept frantically renaming pretty much every single file on his phone (Coulson knew he was never going to find anything again, but this was so worth it) so that the paths would always create some sort of message for her. Ultimately, a system notification alerted him of  
_c u b a n c a f e n e x t t o u n i w e d 1 0 p m . n o o n e m u s t k n o w o k a y ?_ and he instantly dropped everything to come up with some kind of half-credible reason why it was absolutely necessary for him to go undercover alone and in the evening.

He’s been waiting for almost an hour now (and it’s definitely not coffee he’s had to pass the time, but hey, his hands were shaking, so yeah), almost hiding at a tiny table in the corner, but there she is now, making her way over to him. Apparently, she’s gotten rid of the wig – this must be _her_ hair, almost shoulder-length now, but dyed platinum blonde. She’s still going with a punk look, wearing shorts with fishnet stockings and a black leather jacket, and he doesn’t really know how to start talking to her.

She makes everything so easy, though, awkwardly hugs him from the side since he completely forgets to stand up, then squeezes herself onto the bench facing him, scooting to the side until she can look directly at Coulson, her face much too close to his. He’s smiling like an idiot, but she doesn’t seem to mind; on the contrary, she orders him the most luxurious coffee on the menu.

 

**two**

Even the Secret Service seems to be after her now; the last time she was spotted, she was helping out someone who apparently was far too close to the president’s personal security crew. It makes things pretty hard, because the Service doesn’t make any compromises when monitoring all phone activity in the suspicious area. 

He knows Daisy’s out of here, why the heck would she stay close, but then his phone beeps.  
_B a t t e r y l o w_. Coulson suspiciously looks over his shoulder, because that’s clearly not a system notification. He’s typing in a frenzy to rename a file:  
_sdcard0/Coulson/Help/youneedanything.txt_. Another notification shows up:  
_C h a r g e_. He’s legitimately worried now, guesses she’s probably hurt, renames something else:  
_sdcard0/Coulson/Help/areyouhurt.log_. 

That triggers several notifications at once:  
_C h a r g e_ ,  
then again _C H A R G E_ ,  
but also _P h o n e w i l l s h u t d o w n_ , and that makes him panic, because that just sounds really urgent, okay, and he’s anxiously scanning the area for a place where she might be hiding: rooftops, alleyways, suspicious little shops. He’s whirling around until he sees a fast food restaurant on the far end of the square: he doesn’t even register what it’s called, but there’s a huge red neon sign in the window saying _CHANGE NOW_ , some flashy burger ad beneath it, and he doesn’t need more information; he just switches off his phone.

It’s really quite Daisy: hiding in plain sight. She’s not even trying to hide, she’s just taken off the wig and beanie (he can see it peek out of her bag a little), changed her jacket to a bright red trench coat. She smiles as he walks in, and he can’t not return it. They sit together for a few minutes, drinking horrible black coffee from paper cups. Her hair is still platinum blonde, but it’s more of a pixie cut now. Sitting next to her, he realizes she simply put on the coat over her jacket, which is understandable since she surely didn’t have a lot of time to change her appearance.

“I was really worried there for a minute,” he tells her, but his voice goes all soft, so it doesn’t sound like he’s annoyed at all (which he probably isn’t).  
“Yeah. Sorry. I couldn’t spell it out, the Secret Service is all over the place. And all over the frequencies.”  
“I know. Talbot’s here too.”  
They exchange a weird smile, and it says everything about Talbot.  
“Well, I couldn’t really use leetspeak, could I?”  
He swears she’s flirting with him right now. Okay.  
“You could have tried.” There’s something unexpectedly dark in his voice, and the nod she gives him in response feels like he’s doing something really dangerous right now, like the worst thing about potentially getting caught in this dirty fast food place is not the fact that he’s gone dark for five minutes to speak to Quake, but the way she smiles at him.

She kisses him on the cheek when he gets up to leave, briefly makes eye contact with him again as he turns back around after paying the check for the burger she’s had. Out on the street, he switches his phone back on, and it notifies him:  
_B a t t e r y f u l l y c h a r g e d_ , and that still sounds like flirting.

 

**three**

The system notifications decrease after their last coffee together, and Coulson’s worried she might be in trouble (which, to be fair, is nothing new, not since she left S.H.I.E.L.D., anyway). Also, he’s getting weird calls in the middle of the night from numbers his phone doesn’t recognize and that look really weird for some reason. He never picks up, but it’s hard to find sleep like this, so he can’t deny he’s getting a little paranoid.

After a few weeks without contact and particularly hard night (not so much because of the calls, there were no more than three, but because he’s overthinking everything: ransom calls because Daisy’s been kidnapped aren’t even his most desperate idea), he goes to check his phone’s call log.

He stares at the list – it’s not that easy to think clearly when you haven’t had coffee yet – and suddenly, the scales fall from his eyes.  
The caller IDs, the numbers – he doesn’t know how she does it, but it’s leetspeak.  
He’s got _|_375|\/|337_ (let’s meet), a simple _|\|00|\|_ (noon), and there’s also _.-1\/3.-51|)3_ (riverside). For a moment, he’s so relieved and happy that it’s Daisy that it makes him chuckle.

When he arrives at the only bench in the area, she’s already there, her pixie cut a little longer, her brunette roots showing, and she’s wearing a flower dress. He wordlessly goes to sit next to her, smiling, and she hands him a large paper cup of still-hot coffee from the barista facing the bridge. For some reason, he doesn’t feel the least bit guilty that he’s meeting her secretly anymore, even though sharing this small bench with Daisy still feels like something he probably shouldn’t allow himself to do.  
  


**\+ 1**

After a few days of silence, the system notifications on his phone are back, displaying nonsensical code this time, though; leetspeak again. He’s still not okay with his sleeping pattern, so he’s wide awake when the first notification arrives:  
_4.-3|_|4\|/4| <3?_ (areyouawake?). He decides to set a selfie as a background picture in response: the picture’s lit only by his phone’s screen, and he’s taken it from a low angle because he’s lying on his stomach, but it clearly suffices as an answer. 

The next notification really is a string of symbols:  
_4\|/7|-|475(|_|73.|_|5|-|0|_||_|)(0|\/|30\/3.-1|)5|-|4.-3|\/|`/|\/|4.-5|-||\/|4|_|_0\|/2_ (awthatscute.ushouldcomeoveridsharemymarshmallows), and he can instantly feel his heart beat in his throat. After almost five minutes of adrenaline and desperate attempts of rationalizing the situation, he renames a folder:  
_sdcard0/Coulson/yes_. 

Mere seconds later, he receives two consecutive phone calls he knows not to pick up, tries to decipher the numbers, but it’s not leetspeak. As he’s putting on his shoes, it occurs to him that they might just be coordinates: 38/59/50/9, 77/15/14/2. Obviously, with the four points of the compass, there’s not only one spot they could indicate, but he settles for 38°59'50.9"N, 77°15'14.2"W: a nearby spot at Great Falls Park, only minutes from his bed  & breakfast. He picks up a compass from his duffel bag and runs, using his phone as a torch as he enters the park. 

It’s a well-hidden, very peaceful spot; he smiles as soon as he sees the small caravan – it reminds him of when S.H.I.E.L.D. picked up a very talented hacktivist. He knocks on the door very carefully. 

Her hair is even shorter than it was the last time he saw her, but she’s growing out her natural colour again, and she looks so breathtakingly beautiful in her tank top and pajama pants that he suddenly feels quite stupid in his S.H.I.E.L.D. sweater and running shoes.  
“Come in,” she smiles. “I don’t have coffee, but there are marshmallows, we could roast them over the camping st-“  
His hand on her shoulder startles her, and she turns around. 

The look in his eyes is really intense, like he’s both really scared and really happy, and she can’t decide whether she should be kissing him or not. After a moment, she speaks – spells something out for him in leetspeak that starts with a 1 and an L, and he doesn’t wait for her to finish, doesn’t need to transcribe it to know what it means; he gently pushes her against the wall to kiss her, and he swears, the sparkle in her eyes before she kisses him back is all he’s ever wanted. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Hope you liked it! :)


End file.
